This might seem like a dumn question, and it probably is, but has anyone ever tried mixing two or more different yeast strains in one ferment? Would it matter? Would the different yeasts fight it out like in West Side Story? What would happen?
Which is not entirely correct, as the two yeasts that were historically used by the late Brother Adam at Buckfast Abbey are quite close geographically, but he originally used "Maury" yeast, the closest now, which is Lalvin D21 (Maury being a small AOC accredited region itself), and when he couldn't get that, it appears he moved to using the UK packaged version of the Montpellier strain, which is better known here as Lalvin K1-V1116.As long as you pick two yeast strains from a similar geographic location, or similar ethnic backgrounds, it should be fine.
Although there is some possibility of a few of them attempting to mate and create an all new strain, they'll probably just end up dying before anything like that happens.
you have to be a lot more specific than just same species. there is a lot of differences in just one species.You could blend yeasts of the same species which have different flavour profiles, to get the flavour you desire, but I highly doubt that you could blend yeasts of different species. One would totally dominate the other.
I understand though, that some places will use something on their wines that gives a lower ABV start, then after a while when the %ABV has reached a certain level, they'll then repitch (or would it be like restarting ???) something that is more robust, with a higher level tolerance ABV, which finishes the ferment.
I don't know if their technique is to cold crash or otherwise somehow kill off the first yeast before using the second one or not, but it does seem that this method is used with some wines, I just haven't read of anyone experimenting like this with meads.......
Flumpy said:So who's gonna do the following experiment:
3 batches...
1 with yeast A
1 with yeast B
1 with yeast A+B mixed during ferment. Probably will taste like A or B if one yeast totally out-performs the other.
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